You’ve got mail (covered in ants!)

I drove the short distance from office to home, excited for plans to try a restaurant in my new ‘hood that I haven’t been to yet. I pulled in the driveway and hopped out to check the mail, leaving my umbrella in the car. A neighbor waved enthusiastically from her front porch. With one hand in the process of opening the mailbox and the other in the air, I waved back and shouted, “hi!!!” to the friendly lady across the street. I turned my attention back to the mailbox.

What I saw next was comparable to a scene in a Stephen King movie. My opened mailbox was stuffed full of local sale papers and thousands of tiny black ants, packing some white crap around; my hand was crawling with the critters. I can’t be 100% sure, but I’m almost positive the words out of my mouth rhymed with Moley Yuckin’ Fit, paired with aggressive hand flinging. The ocean State Job Lot circular fell into the mud puddle below, and I instantly had the urge to kill whoever thought it would be nice to stick a lollipop wrapper and stick in my box the day before. Apparently, throwing a bypasser’s trash away wasn’t enough to ward off an entire colony of ants – or, could that white substance have been… sugar?

Was my mailbox sugar-bombed by some kid on a skateboard? A welcome to the neighborhood prank of sorts? Or, was the white substance… some sort of “ant matter”? Regardless, I had a situation on my hands. By this point, my navy blue dress, pastel-colored floral scarf, red hair and self-tanning lotion-covered arms were completely rain soaked. I was sad. I ran in the house and warned the Professor that there was some serious ____ going down in our mailbox, and I needed his help. And then, the second part of the freak out came – which lasted the duration of the ant eliminating process.

Our 100 ft water hose was just 3 feet short of the mailbox, no matter which side of the house we dragged it around. We resorted to cups of hot water, Method brand anti-bac bathroom cleaner, two rolls of paper towels and a whole lot of curse words. The whole time, I imagined how I would murder the kid who did this. I knew though, that no matter how intimidating I may think I am, a 6 month baby bump pretty much renders me incapable of scaring anything or anyone (except my husband.) “I wonder if this really is some sort of common suburban teenage ‘welcome to the neighborhood’ prank?” I asked. We both assumed so and finished cleaning up the super pissed-off ant farm. Later, I Googled every combination of the words ant, mailbox, and prank. It turns out, there are several just like me who have experienced this very thing and still have no definitive answer. I eliminated “prank” from my search keywords and came across several articles from various home care/lawn care blogs explaining that ant colonies often form inside dark, dry places (like mailboxes) following heavy rain.

I still can’t decide which it was – prank or nature. I didn’t want to taste the white substance, obviously. The ants were carrying it around like precious cargo, and it appeared to be shaped like little eggs but inside the box, it was just a clump of goo.

I have an eerie feeling I’ll be seeingit again. Ant watch 2013 has now begun.

7 Responses

You may already know this but if you ever have to get rid of an ant colony use anti-repellent products. Too many people use the repellent products. Ants are rather smart. If you kill the ones you see the colony gets alarmed and takes their eggs somewhere else. If you use the anti-repellent the ants will take it back to the colony and kill them all, including the queen. There are very inexpensive anti-repellent products on the market.
Not sure if what you experienced was an all out prank. It’s very unlikely what you saw in the box were ant eggs, though ants will make every effort to take the eggs when leaving for good.

The ants were probably trying to escape drowning and were trying to save the eggs by bringing them into the dry, dark mailbox. You can pick up some ant bait but, since you washed them out, they will probably stay away. Leave the mailbox door open for a few days if you can….they’ll only move the nest to a dark place.

This happens annually in my mother’s mailbox. It happens usually just after a rain storm, in the spring. We assume its from the ants looking for a place to keep the eggs dry. Usually, our solution is to salt the mailbox. Ants hate salt. That usually solves the problem for the year.